At a charity auction in his home city of St Petersburg, one of the Russian prime minister's paintings, sold for the first time, fetched 32m roubles (£773,000). Putin is known as an action man so the revelation of an artistic bent came as something of a surprise.

The work - entitled Pattern - was sold together with paintings by other Russian celebrities to raise money for children with cancer. It depicts a festive view from inside a cabin and was allegedly dashed off on 26 December. The irony will not be lost on victims of the protracted gas row with Ukraine: the two frost-covered windows in the painting look out on to a Ukrainian landscape, with snow falling.